My greed eventually won, and we moved back to the plaza with a total of six knives and two plain ankle bracelets. Manacles, for all the discomfort they caused me.

  Before we left, I redrew the third eye just above the hairline. Kenny was happy to inform me it was the right decision, as the previous placement made it look like a target on my forehead.

  Just as we were coming in, a group of three was leaving the plaza.

  "Whoa, where did ya get the weapons?" The leader asked.

  They looked exhausted, barely standing on their feet. I forgot how bad things were for me just half a day ago.

  "We cleared out the arena," I said, the half-truth pointing to the gargantuan structure at my back.

  "Anything left?" He asked hopefully.

  "Don't think so," I replied.

  "Damn it!" he cursed. "How are we supposed to get the fuckers? With our bare hands?"

  "You're going to hunt ghouls?" Kenny asked in an innocent voice.

  "What else?" The leader snapped. "Everyone who can move his ass moved out to look for them. Even Douglas, and he hates the bitch."

  "Douglas gave in?" I asked, surprised. "I thought he was hellbent on exploring the Pillar, finding a way up."

  "There is no way up," he spat. "The witch trapped the monster, and we went all over the place. It's just one big cave."

  "How?" I asked, stupefied.

  "She gave us torches," he answered.

  Where did she get the torches? My money was on the same place she got her robe, magic.

  "No, how did she trap it?" I asked.

  "Hell, if I know," he replied angrily. "Put a fancy little bottle, and the fucker was sucked right the hell in. Told us it was the only way to deal with the shade. Now, if we want her Healing, we need to play errand boys for her."

  A shade, huh? That's one way to describe the ghostly apparitions.

  "We can give you some knives," Kenny offered generously.

  That caught me off guard.

  "What my partner means to say," I said, trying to save the situation. "Is we could trade you some of our knives."

  "What do you want?" The leader asked. "We don't have nothing."

  "When you bring in the ghoul, we would like to get a part of it," I proposed.

  The trio looked at each other.

  "You gonna eat it?" One of them asked.

  "What? Why would I eat it?" I asked.

  "People doing all kinds of crazy shit nowadays. We have cannibals now, didn't ya hear?" The leader replied.

  "Do you want a knife or not?" I asked, losing patience.

  "How do you propose that?" The leader asked.

  "One knife for a third of a ghoul," I answered after a brief pause.

  "Just one?" He asked furiously. "We'll need more, and what if the witch refuses to heal for a butchered ghoul."

  "You're haggling with me right now," I rebutted. "You can haggle with her for what's left."

  "And if she won't have it?" He asked. "I don't see anyone else doing what she can do."

  "I don't see anyone else offering their weapons for a promise," I argued. "Maybe you'll get a ghoul, or maybe I'll have to go out looking for you."

  I didn't mention the possibility of the ghoul getting them.

  "Do we have a deal?" I asked.

  Frankly, I would have been okay to miss out on this one. But there was the ugly possibility of them fighting us for our weapons, so I had to suggest something that wouldn't leave me at a loss. They were exhausted and slow, but anything could happen in a fight, and I would rather avoid it.

  "Two knives," the leader tried.

  "For half of the ghoul," I agreed.

  They looked thoughtful at that.

  "And if she refuses to heal you for the other half, I know someone who would," I sweetened the deal.

  "Who?" He asked suspiciously.

  "We'll talk it over if we'll have to," I said. "But I doubt it'll come to that."

  They started hushing it among themselves.

  "Deal," He answered. "You'll get half."

  I came closer and extended the goods, handles first.

  "Who do I write the receipt to?" I asked.

  "Thomas," he answered, waiting for something.

  "Don't make me come looking for my payment, Thomas," I suggested moving past them.

  ***

  "You didn't have to be so hostile," Kenny complained. "I just wanted to help them."

  "They were ready to jump you," I warned.

  "No, they were not," he replied.

  "I don't think you understand what desperate people are willing to do," I noted. "They were going to take on a ghoul unarmed, and then we came along."

  I looked at him.

  "Who's scarier—us or a ghoul?" I asked.

  Kenny wavered.

  The plaza looked empty. Less than half the people remained on the grounds. Most were lethargic, sitting or lying silently to the sides. The Sight showed me they were dimmer and less substantial than Kenny or me, but they still possessed enough energy to be targeted for whatever they had left.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "What do you think about the shade deal?" Kenny asked.

  "If it was anything like the ghost, Claire must have found a way to contain it," I said. "Keep it for later. As a snack."

  "We barely managed to take one down together," he pointed out. "And she handled it alone?"

  "We made ourselves some weapons. Nothing stopping her from making some of her own," I reasoned. "The difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional has the appropriate tools for the job and knows how to use them."

  "Then, shouldn't we be making our own tools?" Kenny asked.

  "I'd love to have a magic wand to solve all my problems," I agreed. "But we'll need a lot more energy to figure it all out."

  The rules of magic were still largely opaque, and I wasn't going to spend any energy or mana, whatever it was, to figure all of this stuff out on my own. Not only was every miscast spell an irreversible loss of energy if we didn't have a steady supply of shades to Drain, but the accompanying feeling of weakness was also a determinant. The closest analogy I could come up with was comparing it to losing a unit of blood. Not detrimental on its own, but bad enough to make me want to avoid it. At most, I would try the spells with the highest probability of working. The low-hanging fruit.

  We came up to the Pillar. A rope made of dirty clothes was dangling invitingly from the entrance.

  "Let's see if they missed anything," I proposed.

  We climbed to a spacious lobby. More people sat there, barely illuminated by the entrance, dirty, with some missing pieces of clothing. An air of despair hung above them.

  Those were the people who worked so hard, day after day, to get to their only hope of finding the way above ground, to return home. Their hope was squashed, they didn't find what they were looking for, and now they gave up. They didn't have anything left in them to try something new, to look for another way.

  I picked up a discarded piece of wood from the ground. It was a used-up torch. The wood was new, untouched by time.

  I showed it to Kenny.

  "No way she found it lying around," he confirmed my thoughts.

  We continued through a hallway to an enormous great hall. A long raised dais at the far side of the room was topped with a large stone throne. The craftsmanship was extraordinary, horrifying forms of owl beaks open in a silent screech, and serpents adorned it.

  I looked around, using the Sight. The ceiling was very high, but it was there. I couldn't find a trace of anything magical or hidden, no hidden doors or shafts. Instead, it was an abandoned throne room carved into the side of the monumental Pillar. It was impressive, but it wasn't much more than that.

  We explored dozens of the smaller rooms in the structure but found nothing else. I understood the desperation now. Their hard-won salvation was snatched away from under their noses.

  Kenny left me after some time, weighed down by the futility of it all. I sat on the throne and tried to imagine this place in better times. When this throne served its function in its heyday, the city's ruler commanded hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants from this very seat of power.

  My curiosity was strong enough to try to force the third eye to show me the past. Giddy with the possibility of developing a new ability, I tried different concepts, from wishing to see it with the magical Sight like I did with energy to connecting to some experimental ideas I'd taken away from brainstorming with Kenny. But it was either impossible, or the small amounts of energy I was willing to risk for it was evidently insufficient.

  With the way home missing, I was left with the only thing I could do to survive. I had to better myself. Improve my weapons, my understanding of magic, and my skills.

  Next, I tried to wrack my brain, trying to understand how Claire could get all those new items, but I couldn't think of anything remotely plausible. She might have used something similar to our Shaping spell to build it up from the remaining garbage, but she didn't venture to gather the raw materials, nor did she ask for them from others. She rarely left the temple, if ever.

  I assumed her ability to tell time was a scam, and the fear of using true names could be superstitious for all I could tell. I wasn't aware of her using them in her magic, only hiding her own, and I was going to do the same.

  The only other thing I could learn from her is the construction of a bottle to trap shades. I could try to Shape pottery pieces or a stone into a bottle shape and draw the appropriate magical symbols on it if needed.

  And that was all. For all Her Highness's mysterious and superior nature, those were the only abilities I lacked compared to her. The distance between us wasn't as considerable as it looked at first.

  I gathered up the used torches and, part by part, Shaped them into an approximation of a fused spear. Anything that would help me keep my distance when a ghoul attacked was an effort well spent.

  A knife went for the tip, and a bracelet was Shaped for the butt of the spear. I was left with a fearsome weapon. Better than a knife or sword too. I could whack things with the heavy butt or pierce them in a straightforward move. It required little skill and had a much farther reach.

  It was mind-bending to watch the Shaping of the wood. Metals were expected to bend and stretch, but wood wasn't supposed to behave that way.

  I went back to the entrance to try to salvage the clothes. The Shaping spell could stitch and clean them up into a robe or a bag. But someone beat me to the punch. The makeshift rope was missing. Too bad for the contributors, as I could see some of them still missing their pieces.

  I looked for Kenny. The entrance to the Pillar was the best vantage point to see the plaza, but I couldn't see him anywhere, so I returned to the throne room.

  Filled with energy, this was the best time to develop new magic. I knew my vitality would only go down from here until my next outing. I needed something strong and versatile. I whirled the heavy spear around, getting used to its weight and momentum. It was a lot heavier than I expected. I didn't notice when I was carrying it around, but wielding it and making sudden moves was very taxing. Changing its trajectory was nearly impossible once it got going.

  This weapon and my Drain spell were my only methods to defend myself. The spear might be enough against a ghoul if I'm lucky. But the last shade showed me that my Drain was insufficient to bring it down, not on its own.

  It was unfair, really. That the only spell we had with the ability to harm our opponent was not enough. When we came up with it, we didn't plan to Drain a ghoul to defeat it. We wanted to kill it the conventional way and then Drain its body for energy. But shades were immune to anything physical.

  I watched the spear's tip closely as I willed it to fill with energy the same way the shield filled up when Kenny worked his Shaping on it. The Ankh on my chest lit up, channeling my life, and the spear started to intensify its glow, the bronze head basking in golden light.

  It was all about energy and intent, so I concentrated on my will for the light to cling to the weapon, not dissipate as it did after unsuccessful Shapings. Then I focused on my intention for the energy to harm. I wanted it to hurt anything, even if it had no material body.

  The infused spear didn't show any change, but as long as I was concentrating, it wasn't losing its light either.

  I tried to imagine a shade in a lunge towards me, its maws snapping just inches away from my face. I raised my spear to defend myself and stabbed it forward to pierce the retreating enemy. But, unfortunately, my movements were so slow and uncoordinated that it left no doubt in my mind that my strike wouldn't even come close.

  I tried several more times, but I only tired myself and slowed further. Finally, after a couple of minutes of training, I was barely waving the thing.

  If things were normal, it would take me months of training and good nutrition to get in good enough shape for this kind of action. But nothing was normal about this. I was now thinking about defending against shades and ghouls, and I wasn't even eating, so I didn't even know if I could develop the needed muscles.

  I made another visit to the entrance, but Kenny was still missing.

  It was time to develop another spell, and I knew what I was missing.

  I drew a simple design of a circle, with two smaller satellite dots orbiting it in curved lines, concentrating on its meaning—the meaning of force and movement, like the inevitable force of a planet pulling with incredible power its orbiting moons.

  I found a small pebble and held it, and willing the necessary energy.

  "Up," I commanded.

  And up it went, shooting straight to the high ceiling.

  I cringed at the sound of impact, remembering the listless people just two rooms away. But they were so indifferent that nobody came to investigate the noise.

  I repeatedly tried to recast the spell with different amounts of power from different distances, but I didn't like the results.

  It was the same as it was with Healing. Touching the target was all good and dandy, but the moment there was some distance between us, the energy dispersed too much, quickly becoming inefficient.

  I tried again with a pebble, but instead of flinging it away, I used a constant trickle of energy to remain in control.

  The pebble orbited around me several times, and then I flung it away. I cursed. It was about as weak as launching it from the same distance without the fancy maneuvering.

  Healing was most efficient when touching the target, only second to targeting oneself. The worst was Healing at a distance, but we stopped practicing it after we noticed the stiff upsurge in required power.

  Could it get better with practice? I didn't know.

  I applied the Force sign to myself, willing all my movements to have more oomph.

  Jumping forward and swinging my spear, I could hear the rush of wind in my ears. I laughed in elation. I was much faster now, and the spear weighed no more than a twig.

  Unfortunately, this tired me much faster, and I had to take a break.

  I came back to it again and again. It was the most fun I had felt since I discovered magic. The feeling of speed and power was intoxicating. Sometimes I applied Force to my whole body and enjoyed it fully, sometimes only to the spear, making lightning-fast stabs. Every time I had to rest, I impatiently planned the next attempt.

  For the last experiment, I tried to lift myself off the ground. It was more demanding than my other trials.

  I concentrated on the effect and slowly increased the flow of energy. The signs of Life and Force thrumming with energy.

  The change I was waiting for came just as I was about to give up.

  The feeling of doing the impossible with my own power was inexpressible.

  I felt my feet, ever so slowly, lose touch with the ground.